


spiderwebs

by jaekyu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Exes with Benefits, Feelings, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Break Up, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-05 23:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12199617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: LEAVE A MESSAGE & I'LL CALL YOU BACK.Johnny and Jaehyun broke up six months ago. Everyone seems to be able to remember that besides them. Old habits sure do die hard.





	spiderwebs

**Author's Note:**

> aka johnny and jaehyun banter and then fuck each other. sometimes they banter while they fuck each other. 
> 
> too many no doubt references in this. here's a [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/eyemoles/playlist/5o8U7OrxDk7aG9IkigCPIk) of what i listened to while i wrote this.

I still love to wash in your old bathwater  
love to think that you couldn't love another, I can't help it

you're my kind of man  
\- “BATHWATER”, No Doubt

 

I remember being naked to my waist, though not in which direction  
I’m a glutton for love, can you give me some romance? I'm a glutton for sin  
We are but two atheists in lust, you know, we gotta make our own luck  
\- “THERE ARE LISTED BUILDINGS”, Los Campesinos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 **YOU CAME IN WITH THE BREEZE ON SUNDAY MORNING** :

 

Johnny wakes up on a Sunday, months ago, with four unread text messages.

Yuta’s is the most wholesome, and the newest: _come down when you wake up, I’m making pancakes._ The one from Taeyong is less so, _you threw tup equila and nachos on my shoes, asshole. you can buy me new ones or clean them yourself_. It’s from an hour before Yuta’s.

Ten’s is the oldest, a rushed, _where r u,_ from the night before where he must have hit the comma instead of the question mark.

The last, from the earliest that morning or the that latest that night, depending on how you look at it, is from Jaehyun.

_mis s u. call me tmrw._

Johnny deletes that one.

 

 

 

 

 

When things don’t go quite according to plan, we like to find something to blame for it. That’s human nature.

We’re not sure where the blame lies in this situation, exactly. Maybe by the end of this you’ll have figured it out for yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not breakfast but they’re eating breakfast; a gaggle of five of them, sitting at the tables in front of a Starbucks, nursing cups of coffee and the last remnants of their food.

Johnny shows up wearing sunglasses and feeling like death.

“You could have gone home and changed,” Ten throws over the lip of his cup, cocking an eyebrow as he examines Johnny’s very familiar, too familiar, outfit from head to toe. Ten hands Johnny an egg and cheese sandwich and Johnny collapses into the single empty chair left at the table and sighs into a first bite of it.

“Too far, too tired, too hungry,” Johnny waves off. “Give me a sip of your macchiato.”

Yuta’s got a mouthful of bagel when he asks Johnny, “I thought you two broke up?” and sprays crumbs down the front of his shirt.

“They did,” Ten answers for Johnny, the ultimate betrayal. “They broke up six months ago.”

“We broke up six months ago,” Johnny parrots, defeated.

“Mess,” Taeyong mumbles under his breath. Then he hands Yuta a napkin.

 

 

 

 

 

**If We Could Bring The Jury’s Attention To The Following Evidence:**

 

Exhibit A) Johnny and Jaehyun meet in college.

For all intents and purposes, it was a pretty standard traveling from point a (vaguely friends) to point b (regularly having sex) for the two of them. Eventually it became this pseudo-dating thing, there friends knew and they didn’t fuck anyone else, but they also never really talked about it. And then, at some point, they weren’t pseudo-dating anymore, and they called it a break-up, and Johnny listened to that one No Doubt album a lot ( _Tragic Kingdom_ , the one with all the songs Gwen Stefani wrote about breaking up with the bassist of her band, not that other one with the songs about her having a crush on Gavin Rossdale), but it wasn’t really a break up, because nothing had really happened. Because they never really defined what they were ending.

 

Exhibit B) They never get new friends.

It’s too much of a pain this late into their years at college and neither of them are petty enough to try and force anyone to stop talking to the other. Also, their friends don’t really know what the fuck is going on. They didn’t really understand the parameters of Johnny and Jaehyun dating, which means they didn’t understand how the relationship worked, or what it meant, or if there was any wronged party in the break up. So none of them could really take sides, anyway, because there weren’t even any real sides to take.

 

Exhibit C) They go back and forth on who’s over who.

One they all went out together Johnny brought a girl and Jaehyun drank too much rosé and threw up in Taeyong’s sink. The time before that they had gone a few weeks without speaking and, when they went out for karaoke, Johnny ended up singing a heavily butchered version of Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional”.

(“I think that means neither of them are really over anything,” Taeyong says to Ten, whisper-shouting over Johnny’s ugly warblings of _I remember the way that we touched, I wish I didn’t like it so much_. Ten hums disapprovingly in agreement.)

 

Exhibit D) Neither of them have made any conscious effort to move on.

Johnny feels like he’s seen every straight girl, bisexual human and gay boy on Tinder he possibly could and it has amounted to barely anything. Just stuff like bad sexting, nudes he ends up wondering why he sent and never really feel that fulfilling to get, a couple of hookups and a lot of people whose name he doesn’t recognize in his contacts. He doesn’t even know why he opens the app anymore.

Jaehyun has made out exactly twice with anyone who wasn’t Johnny in a year and a half. He doesn’t like to talk about it.

 

Exhibit E) They keep fucking. That's probably the hardest evidence we have.

 

**PROCEED TO DELIBERATION.**

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny’s drinking whiskey sours at the bar when Jaehyun slides up beside him, movements like the wave that breaks the quiet surface of a lake. But the shape of his body is all hipbones and collar bones and shoulder blades; just hard edges and sharp angles.

“How many of those have you had?” He asks Johnny, head in a tilt towards his half-empty glass.

Johnny shrugs. “Four,” he takes another sip, “Or, this might make it five.”

Jaehyun laughs. The kind of laugh where he tilts his head back, exposes the long column of his bare throat, a plot of land Johnny has mapped with fingers and tongue. “You celebrating something?”

Johnny shrugs again. He lifts his glass, tips it in toast towards Jaehyun and says, a little slurred, “to bad decisions.”

Jaehyun laughs again.

 

 

 

 

The problem with parties, Johnny thinks, is they always need to end. The problem with bars is that there’s always a last call. You don’t gotta go home but you can’t stay here.

Johnny leaves the bar and follows Jaehyun to his apartment.

Jaehyun’s hard body turns pliable under the press of Johnny’s hands and mouth. Like he’s melting, but only for Johnny’s benefit, it’s not genuine, because there’s an edge that Jaehyun keeps. The edge of his top teeth digging into Johnny’s bottom lip and pulling. The edge of his fingernails digging into Johnny’s shoulder blades. The rest of him; loose, bendable, moldable.

Jaehyun goes down on him and then Johnny goes down on Jaehyun, stopping just before Jaehyun comes. He opens Jaehyun up, then, with a slow precision that’s less about precision and more about teasing.

“Fuck you,” Jaehyun says. He’s got one leg over Johnny’s shoulder, Johnny's two fingers deep inside of him while he nips against Jaehyun’s thigh. Jaehyun digs his ankle into Johnny’s back and says, “okay, okay, I’m good. You’re an asshole. Get on with it.”

They fuck. Jaehyun comes all over his own belly and then Johnny licks it off of him, in slow, long laps that drift closer to Jaehyun’s soft cock then they need to.

When Johnny tries to kiss him Jaehyun says, “don’t fucking kiss me with my spunk all over your mouth.”

“It’s _yours_ , what do you care? You swallow your own spit and when you were a baby you ate your own boogers.” Johnny shakes his head, “you’ve never been curious about how you taste?”

“You’re disgusting,” Jaehyun wrinkles his nose. “You and anyone else who has tasted it likes it just fine. I don’t care about it otherwise.”

“Whatever.” Johnny rolls his eyes. He tries not to think about _and anyone else_. It’s not worth it.

Johnny slides off the bed, gathers his clothes.

They don’t try and kiss again.

 

 

 

 

 

“You know,” Ten says. His feet are in Johnny’s lap, prodding against the fleshiest parts of his tummy with his toes. Johnny tries not to think about Jaehyun's come on his own stomach after he came. “No one is the history of ever has fucked their ex on a regular basis and ended up thinking it was a good decision.”

Johnny pushes Ten’s feet off his lap. “Thanks for that,” Johnny replies, “I had no idea.”

Ten throws his hands up in defence. “Hey man,” he says, “I’m your best friend. Just looking out for you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 _To bad decisions,_ Johnny had said and he had meant it.

 

 

 

 

 

No one really ever understood the parameters of Johnny and Jaehyun dating. Everyone knows that they’re still fucking. Funny how that works.

They try to be discreet but only sometimes. They fuck at Jaehyun’s apartment, not Johnny’s, because Johnny lives in the same building as Taeyong and Yuta. They don’t go places together but they leave together. They make out around their friends if they're drunk enough. They’re trying to be discreet, sure, but it’s not a secret.

“Jaehyun just got here,” Doyoung says, he tilts his head towards the door. His teeth are a little purple from the wine he’s drinking.

“Thanks?” Johnny feigns ignorance.

Why would Doyoung think he cares?

He knows why Doyoung thinks he cares.

He does care.

“Oh come on,” Ten shoves Johnny with his shoulder. “We all know he’ll be draped in your lap and making out with you in an hour. An hour max.” And then Ten drapes his body across Johnny’s lap and laughs.

Johnny pushes Ten off of him. “You’re all gonna give me premature wrinkles.”

It sure does suck when they end up being right.

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny is laying in Jaehyun’s bed, hair a mess, sheets a mess, limbs a mess across the mattress.

Jaehyun rolls onto his stomach, says, “I’ve picked a resolution for the New Year.”

“It’s September.”

“Shut up. Ask me what it is.”

“What is it?”

“To stop fucking you.”

“Ha ha fucking ha.”

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier, when we said Johnny deleted the text from Jaehyun?

We lied.

More on that later.

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey stud,” Jaehyun’s tone is mocking, trailing his hand from Johnny’s spine to his shoulder, sitting next to him at the bar. “Buy me a drink and I’ll blow you in the bathroom.”

“Fuck you,” Johnny replies, rolling his eyes. But then he says, “you still drink rum and coke?”

When Jaehyun smiles in response it’s all teeth.

“This feels a little like prostitution,” Johnny says afterwards. Jaehyun’s finished his drink and they’re in the bathroom, the stall furthest from the door, Johnny up against the wall and Jaehyun in front of him. “Like I’m paying five bucks for you to suck my dick.”

“If I was a prostitute I would charge more than five dollars to put a dick in my mouth,” Jaehyun replies, slinking to his knees, somehow managing to look graceful despite a lack of room. “Dude’s have paid for more that one drink for me to do less than blow them. Don’t think about it too much.”

“You do this a lot? Suck guys off in public restrooms?” Johnny hisses when Jaehyun gets his dick out and strokes it once, then twice.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” And Jaehyun dips his head down, like he’s gonna get his mouth around Johnny, but no - he doesn’t. He starts lapping at Johnny’s thighs with his tongue like he’s a cat, cleaning up a smear of precome, running his tongue from outer to inner thigh. So close yet so far. Johnny can feel the heat from Jaehyun’s skin on his cock but there is no contact, no wetness to it the way a mouth would have.

Johnny groans at a particularly long and wet lick, banging his head against the wall in frustration. “I’m not a girl,” he says, “you don’t have to get me all wet before you go down on me.”

“Just trying to be a thoughtful bedfellow.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“What should I call it then?” Jaehyun asks but he doesn’t wait for an answer before sliding Johnny’s dick down his throat, a mouthful circled in a crooked smirk.

 

 

 

 

 

 **Later** :

Jaehyun doesn’t pick up. Johnny leaves a voicemail.

“Hey,” he says lamely into the receiver, silence the only response. He takes too long to keep talking. Jaehyun will notice that. He always notices things like that. “Hey, I -”

Sometimes Johnny feels like him and Jaehyun are doing this all in reverse. Like they started an old, bored couple and somewhere along the line forgot how to talk to each other, or be sensible around each other. One day they might just forget who the other is.

Wouldn’t that make this thing a whole lot easier?

“Listen,” Johnny pushes his bangs out of his eyes. “Thanks for hanging out last night. It was good to see you. You told me to call you so I’m calling you, I guess. I don’t know why. Whatever. Sorry. See you.”

 

 

 

 

 

They don’t talk to each other for two months after they do that thing they’ll call a break-up.

This is before keeping the same friends and the familiarity of company betrays them and leaves them caught up in each other’s orbits forever. This is before the text message. This is before the voicemail.

Johnny gets invited to a party at Taeil’s. Halfway there Taeyong and Yuta turn to him and say, “Jaehyun’s gonna be there.”

Johnny stops in his tracks. He breathes out through his nose, slow, and then says, “what the fuck?”

“You can’t avoid each other forever,” Yuta clicks his tongue.

“You were barely together anyway.” Taeyong rolls his eyes. And that must be so easy for him to say, his happy committed relationship, sharing an apartment and a group of friends and a life.

Johnny doesn’t say anything. He scuffs his shoes against the pavement, unsure of how to convince his friends of things he’s not really sure of himself.

 

 

 

 

 

Jaehyun isn’t surprised when he sees Johnny at Taeil’s party. Someone must have told him Johnny was coming.

This was inevitable. They’re still running in the same social circle.

“How’s that guy - what was his name again?”

“Who cares,” Jaehyun replies. “Didn’t work out. How have you been?”

“Who cares.”

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so: they call it a break up. It wasn’t a break up because they weren’t really together. It wasn’t a break up but it was easier to call it a break up. If it had lasted a couple more months, if the two of them figured out how use their tongues and teeth and lips to form words, maybe it would have been a real break up. It wasn’t a real break up. Jaehyun wanted to go hang out with this other guy - what was his name? Johnny can’t remember.

Doesn’t really matter, does it? Apparently it didn’t work out.

That’s funny, because Johnny and Jaehyun technically didn't work out either, but here they are: the bathroom in Taeil’s apartment at Taeil’s party, making out. They’re both drunk, too, so at least they can put on the lists of excuses when they get asked about this: we were drunk, we needed closure, what happened, I can’t remember.

Jaehyun’s pressed up against the wet sink, soaking his ass through his jeans, but he’s not complaining. His mouth is busy biting into Johnny’s.

“Oh my god,” Johnny breathes against Jaehyun’s chin, barely broken away from his mouth. “Fuck you, I hate that we’re doing this.”

“I’m about to make you come and you’re complaining?” As if to make his point, Jaehyun pulls open the button on Johnny’s pants, runs the pads of his fingers along the line of Johnny's now exposed boxers.

“Fuck you,” Johnny repeats, “I’m taking a vow of celibacy after this.”

“You’re not,” Jaehyun rolls his eyes. “Now stop talking. Kiss me more.”

Johnny wants to say no, just to be an asshole, but he’s never been good at denying himself things he wants.

He hoists Jaehyun up onto the sink, gets his jeans more wet, digs his fingers into the bend where Jaehyun hips meets his thigh, and feels Jaehyun move against the pressure and make a noise in the back of his throat.

“Taeil’s gonna be mad we fucked in his bathroom.” Jaehyun mumbles, pushing his jeans just far enough down his legs, watching Johnny do the same.

“Whatever,” Johnny opens Jaehyun’s legs wider with a press of his hand against Jaehyun’s bare thigh. “He invited both of us. It’s his own fault.”

Jaehyun laughs. It’s the first time Johnny’s made him laugh in months. Johnny kisses Jaehyun to stop him, keep him quiet, so that Johnny can stop thinking about it.

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny’s pulling up his pants. Jaehyun’s spitting come into the sink and running the faucet to wash it away.

“Hey,” Jaehyun hands Johnny his phone. “Put your number in.”

“You deleted it?”

“Don’t say it like it,” Jaehyun unlocks his phone, pulls up his contact list. “Like you didn’t delete my number too.”

Johnny did. He doesn’t want to admit it. He discreetly texts himself from Jaehyun’s number so he can save it and pretend he never did.

Before they leave the bathroom Jaehyun says, “did you cry about me? Even just a little bit?” He’s smiling so fucking wide and smug.

“You wish.”

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny was kind of into maps, a long time ago, when he was a kid. Thought he’d be a cartographer until he realized everything that was worth being discovered had already been discovered anyway. There were depths of the ocean and corners of space but things like that we’re going to take time, and Johnny was an impatient kid, and so he gave up on that dream before it even really even settled inside of him.

See, now, he wishes he had tried a little harder. Because there’s something here: there’s a route, a point a to point b, for him and Jaehyun. And he can’t track it. He doesn't think it's a straight line. The point is he's note sure, he knows it's there but he can't put a finger on it.

“If me and Jaehyun dated again -”

Ten interrupts him. “You didn’t date properly in the first place,” he says, “so you might as well give it a shot.”

 

 

 

 

 

This time it’s Johnny who sits next to Jaehyun at the bar. They’re here with their friends. It’s like any other weekend.

“Hey,” Johnny smiles. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Jaehyun smiles back. And maybe they’re doing this all wrong, maybe they’re doing this all in reverse.

Who cares.

They’ll figure it out.

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny calls and Jaehyun picks up.

“Hey,” Johnny says.

“Hey,” Jaehyun says back.


End file.
